Thursday, May 12, 2005

A crack has opened in the historical Black continuum. 2005 will be recorded as the year that the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) came apart at the seams, the victim of an unprecedented rightwing money and media offensive in Black America, rank treachery by a hardcore handful of Caucus members, and the indiscipline and gross irresponsibility of many more.

The CBC’s collective failure to stand for its constituents and the struggle-birthed legacy of African Americans is also, ironically, a product of historical Black political practice and instinct: the imperative toward unity, which has up to now been the salvation and defining characteristic of the African American polity.

Black progressives, seeking unity above all else, have allowed the Congressional Black Caucus (and other Black institutions) to be neutered by the machinations of a small and unrepresentative group of corporate collaborators who are paid specifically to create the illusion of vast new fractures in African American public opinion. These mercenary men and women profit by bearing false witness to their own constituents’ core beliefs on issues of peace, social and racial equality, public power vs. corporate domination, elemental fairness in the marketplace and public sphere, and the struggle to abolish privilege. Six members make up the core of defectors from the historical Black Political Consensus – deviants from the CBC’s proud 36-year progressive tradition: Harold Ford, Jr. (TN), Artur Davis (AL), David Scott (GA), Sanford Bishop (GA), Albert Wynn (MD), and William Jefferson (LA). All but Jefferson are members of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and/or the Blue Dog Coalition, vehicles for corporate funding and intrigue in the Democratic Party. Having reached critical mass with the election of Alabama’s Davis and Georgia’s Scott in 2002, the corporate-allied faction’s influence is greatly enhanced by the DLC’s institutional and financial clout.

I've heard before that GA had a few elected Blacks officials that were bought and paid for by corporate collaborators so they do not surprise me by their actions. Nor am I surprised by anybody coming out of Louisiana. I was born in LA, and if you ever visit there, you will see so much racism, so much non-progressiveness from the Black community it will sicken you. A friend taught at Southern in Baton Rouge for two years and said, while living there, they couldn't get any pertinent news about the world until they went on vacation. They said they couldn't believe how the people were kept in the dark about the world around them. As for the rest of the CBC who defected, this is a sad commentary for African Americans. This is why we must address this type of behavior like what Maxine Waterswas doing when she called out that unscrupulous Ken Blackwell.